Heroes: ''Run!'' Review

Claire's life becomes even more complicated as Matt and Jessica have a heroes showdown.

One of the negative aspects that has plagued multiple episodes of Heroes is the often sprawling amount of information and characters the writers have tried to include in a single hour. While this succeeded in giving us a lot of action and moving the story along at a great pace, it often resulted in shorthand storytelling. We got quick hits of information instead of developing a particular story. "Run!" however, was a much more focused episode which eliminated that sprawl by having some great character crossovers.

As we've taken the first half of the season to get to know these characters, it's now time for bigger, more meaningful crossovers to occur. Possibly the biggest of the series has Claire right at the center. In this episode, the situation with her "families" deeply intensified. Her adoptive mother was suffering more than ever from the affects of the Haitian's constant memory wiping. Knowing that her adoptive father is responsible, but still unable to admit to having that knowledge, Hayden Panettiere gave Claire a convincingly real tempered rage. To make Claire's situation worse, it turned out her birth mother, Meredith, is no angel. She took money from Nathan to keep quiet about their child born out of wedlock, and then lied to Claire about the entire situation. Clearly, Claire is nearing a breaking point and this episode worked well in pushing her closer to the edge.

The other major crossover in this episode was between Matt Parkman and Niki/Jessica. It was a perfect setup to have Matt doing private security for the man Jessica was assigned to assassinate. One of the enjoyable things about Heroes is the anticipation of witnessing these types of showdowns. While there wasn't any flying or fireballs, both characters used their powers to their advantage. Matt's mind reading ability clued him into the hit and warned of Jessica's arrival in the elevator. Jessica was able to free herself from the cuffs and send Matt flying through the window. Their confrontation worked because the result was consistent with their abilities-- Matt's mind reading was never going to beat Jessica's strength.

Ali Larter as Jessica

Another positive aspect of "Run!" was having Sylar and Mohinder coming together. Sylar beat Mohinder to Zane Taylor, a man who was able to melt objects. Sylar not only took Zane's power, but also took his place (right down to wearing his Ramones T-shirt). Believing Sylar to be Zane, Mohinder was eager to work with this individual. We loved how this paralleled Sylar's first meetings with Chandra Suresh. We were giddily terrified by Sylar's reaction to Mohinder talking about the thousands of people that could be out there with similar abilities. And even more excitedly horrified at the idea of Sylar working with Mohinder to find those individuals.

Unfortunately, the series seems to have lost its way with Hiro and Ando. Since the stellar first half of the season, where Hiro was the absolute best part of the show, their storylines have lost that sense of purpose, of destiny. This week, especially, the pair was merely comic relief for the other, more dramatic stories. They dressed up as waiters to sneak into a hotel room, Ando had to hide under a bed and Hiro got locked in a storeroom where we then we had to watch him throw himself against an immoveable door over and over again. What the writers have done with these formerly great characters is very frustrating. Hopefully they will soon put our favorite dynamic duo back on the right track. After all, they have less than two weeks to stop the destruction of New York City!